17th September 1932: Members of the MCC cricket team aboard the liner ‘Orontes’ at Tilbury, en route for Australia (left to right) Walter Hammond, Douglas Jardine (captain), Brown, Bowes,
Duckworth (head turned), Harold Larwood, Leyland, Mitchell, Paynter, Herbert Sutcliffe, Verity, Voce and Wyatt. Photo by H. F. Davis/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.
No, not this lot – though they were so good they might have beaten Bradman and Australia in 1932-33 bowling to “ordinary” fields. At the start of the tour, however, Jardine’s men travelled from Perth to Adelaide by train across the Nullarbor Plain. It was a long, often tedious trip. To while away the time they picked various All-Time XIs. This was their Greatest Englishmen XI:
Nelson (Captain), Wellington, Lister, Rhodes (Cecil, not Wilfred), Kelvin, Simpson, Gladstone, Shaftesbury, Dickens, Shaw, Watt, Disraeli.
You will have noticed that nearly half the side, strictly speaking, aren’t English at all.
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